31 Days of Kisses: A Good Omen Advent Calendar

Home and Other Fires

What happened to Day 4 of this challenge, you may ask? Scope creep beyond ficlet length, that happened. Expect a repurposed chapter set in a Soho basement gay club in 1975 in my BigBang fic.  I intend to open every window on this advent calendar, though, so Cranberries will be opened at a random point in this challenge.

Aziraphale tried to decide where to put Crowley's cup of tea. It was more difficult than it used to be, seeing that Crowley's head was dangling down towards the floor, his spine bent at what seemed like a terribly uncomfortable angle in order to keep his buttocks tucked in the depths of the couch, his long thighs extending up the back and his knees looped over.

What was even more disconcerting than the inhuman bendiness was how nicely Crowley fit the couch in that position. It led to the speculation that he had purchased the chair--no, it was Crowley, he would have had the couch custom made--to exactly the proportions needed to dangle upside down over it, baking his face and chest next to the fire.

Aziraphale sighed and put the cup near Crowley's dangling hand. The demon opened one eye, hissed "Thanksss," and apparently went back to sleep.

That was one of the unconsidered quirks of living with Crowley. He slept more of the time than seemed reasonable, and in more places than seemed possible. Another was the amount of heat Crowley liked. The fire tended to be stoked so high, on top of the central heating, that Aziraphale had reluctantly discarded all his layers one by one until he wore nothing but his shirt sleeves, not even a nice cotton vest underneath. After a few centuries of being fully clad, he felt naked.

The third was that Crowley himself apparently didn't wear a lot of clothes inside. That was probably, Aziraphale told himself irritably, why he needed the fire stoked so hot. Right now, Crowley's thin chest was bare, and like his face extremely flushed by proximity to the fire, his skin reddened and warm looking and--

Aziraphale himself felt like he was on fire a lot of the time. Maybe this whole South Downs thing was a mistake.

"You don't like my flat, do you?" Crowley asked one day, without anything prior leading up to it.

Aziraphale looked up from the dried dog food he was feeding the swans--a small child had lectured him on the wrongs of feeding bread to birds, and he had been mortified and seized with centuries of accumulated guilt--and tried to think of an appropriately tactful answer.

"It's a very impressive showcase for you, dear. Properly demonic."

Crowley made a sound between a snort and a hiss. "You always find a reason to meet somewhere else."

"You don't like your flat," Aziraphale said defensively.

Crowley stared out across the lake, the wind ruffling his short auburn hair. "Perhaps," he said contemplatively, "the thrones are a bit much."

"Perhaps, dear."

"After all, who do I have to impress, these days?" Aziraphale had the distinct impression that Crowley was looking sideways at him, although it was difficult to tell with those closed-in glasses.

"You just have to please yourself, now."

"Hmmph. Let's go back to the bookstore, I'm frozen and I need drinkable coffee." At some point, Crowley had installed a ridiculously expensive and complicated espresso machine in Aziraphale's office. He never seemed to buy coffee beans, but it produced heavenly--no, not heavenly, definitely an earthly pleasure--smelling coffee every time.

Crowley hadn't mentioned his flat again for several weeks, until he asked, "Mind if I borrow some of your things?"

Aziraphale, who had thought he was asleep on the couch, looked up from the book he was rebinding. "My things?"